Overcoming the Fear of Judgment

Buenja and all you beautiful people, welcome to the podcast. We are still in Italy. Oh man, look at that. Beautiful wine field, vineyards, little vines, little terrace. That’s gorgeous. I thought I’d take you for a little walk with me before the sun comes up and starts baking me. And I have to get naked because that’s the only way I can survive out here in the seed, is just to have absolutely nothing touching my skin. Anywho, okay, I want to talk about something that I’ve personally struggled with, and it’s something that I’m still struggling with.

And as I struggle with it, it occurs to me that you probably also struggle with this to a different degree depending on where you are on your journey. And the more successful people that I get around, the more I realize that to different degrees, we are always struggling with this battle, or this is one of the battles that we struggle with. And so I think it can be really helpful just for me to share my experience with it. So my experience with the opinions of others and how I let that affect how I show up in different moments, specifically around one particular context, which is wealth building. So what I mean by this is, it’s really interesting. If you were to watch me on a podcast or watch me on social media, you might have the impression that I am a very extroverted person. But the reality is I’m incredibly introverted. I’m very introverted in social gatherings with my friends.
I prefer just to sit quietly and observe. And so you might see me here, be like, oh, he’s probably the talker in the group. He’s always chatting and like, no, I’m actually very quiet and very observant. Now, part of that, historically, has been because I feel a shyness or an awkwardness or an embarrassment about drawing attention to myself and putting out content onto the Internet has been helped, has been one of the most helpful things I’ve ever done, and helping me get out of my own way and to build a tolerance, a comfort with the opinions and judgments of other people, because so much of my life was spent, you know, with this chip on my shoulder that my dad had given me, which said that you were expected to be the best. Everything that I did, I had this expectation, I need to be the absolute best. And so I was always afraid of looking silly in front of people and having them judge me. I’ve always been very afraid of the judgments of others. Just being totally honest here.
And as I’ve gotten older and I’ve built more objective proof in my life that the opinions of others just do not matter, that do not affect me. And that at the end of the day, I don’t value the judgments of people whose lives I would not want to trade places with. The truth is, like, I still feel. I still feel this internal battle with the judgments of other people and the way that I’ve noticed this express itself. Most recently, I’ve done. I think I’ve made a lot of progress over the years not letting the opinions of other people start to affect how I feel about myself. But now I’m starting to feel this judgment or this pressure around wealth and about the expression of wealth. And I’ve been noticing that one of the reasons, if you know my story, you know that I don’t have a lot of fancy things.
I don’t really care for that. I take a lot of fancy trips like this to Italy, but I like. I don’t drive a fancy car. I don’t have fancy watches or anything like that, because I just. I don’t really care about it. Right. Or at least it’s one of the stories that I’ve told myself is that I don’t care about those things. But the reality might be a little bit more insidious.
There might be an underlying limiting belief here that I’ve started to unpack and started to uncover. And I want to share with this with you, because it’s coming in real time. And I had a conversation with my girlfriend, Jamie, the other day that helped give me a little bit of clarity on this, which is there is a level of wealth and ostentation that I do not aspire to in any degree, but there are different things in life that I look at and think, oh, that might be interesting. That might be cool to have, for me, that thing, at this point, just to let you guys know, fully transparently, is a car. There’s a very particular cardinal I’m interested in, and I resisted buying it for many, many years only because, well, one, I was telling myself that I don’t need it. I’m not worth it. It’s not gonna add any joy to my life or anything like that. Right? And that might be true, but I don’t objectively know because I haven’t experienced it.
So I’m just. I’m making an informed decision, and it probably won’t make any, make any difference. But more insidious is that I think the reason that I’ve actually not. I’ve denied myself. That car, for instance, is I’m afraid of the judgments of others. I’m afraid of driving that to my family’s house for a family dinner. I’m afraid of driving that to the gym. I’m afraid of driving that and being seen by people and having them think, oh, that guy’s an asshole.
Or that guy is this that the other thing? Or that guy’s trying to posture, that guy’s trying to impress. And I caught myself thinking this because I saw a guy driving a similar car the other day, and I thought the same things. And I was like, huh? Isn’t that interesting how for whatever reason, that vehicle, that thing, elicits an opinion, a reaction from me about another person that I know nothing about and that I have no reason to form that decision. Isn’t that interesting? And so that tells me it’s not about the car and that it’s not about the person driving the car. Cause we have stereotypes about people. Like, oh, only dicks drive those. Okay, we can have that. But objectively, is it true? No.
And so, catching myself in that thought pattern, I go, wait, there’s no basis in reality here. Why am I feeling this way? And it was a deep emotion that I felt like I was sure that guy’s an asshole. And I was like, hmm, of course I’m never going to want that. I’m never going to give myself permission to step towards that if that’s who I make a connection. And my fear is that others will make that same connection. But again, the judgments of others should not affect us unless they have earned that right. They have a life that we are striving to, and we’re trying to emulate that. Okay, maybe then we can use their judgments at the point of triangulation.
But at the end of the day, the only opinion of you that matters is your own. And if the opinion that I have of a stranger just for driving that car is negative, then of course I’m going to feel negative about myself. Interesting. Life will show you where you’re not free if you pay attention. And I realized that I’m not free in this one particular area of my life, which is I’m still beholden to the opinions of others. The judgments of others. I’m not free from that. I’m still holding myself back and limiting the things that I want in life because I’m afraid of the judgments of others.
Isn’t that interesting how that happens? Now, I share this with you because you will likely experience this to different degrees as well. This is a game of leveling up, right? And I’ve experienced this at different junctures. So when I started creating content around finance and wealth and investing, I felt really, really embarrassed. And I had friends who said, this is really cringe. This is really, like, I don’t know why you’re doing this. I can barely. I can’t watch this. I had, like, the people closest to me tearing it down, and I had to overcome that.
And I thought I had overcome the judgments and opinions of others, but it turns out it just hides. It hides in the sneakiest places. And so I think a lot about the Orson Scott card quote. We question all of our beliefs except those we truly believe and those we never think to question at all. That quote, that belief that I had about that car, about nice things, is that a limiting belief that is based in a reality? I don’t know. I think the only way to discover that is to step towards it. Because the treasure you. You want the most is in the fear.

Or is. Let me try this again. I’m out of breath. I’m up here in this hill. The treasure you seek is in the cave you fear to enter most. There’s a beautiful lake back there. Hopefully you guys can see that the treasure you value most is in the cave you feared to enter. So what caves are you afraid to enter? My friend, that is the million dollar question here I encourage you to consider today, and that will do it for me.

Until next time, stay happy, focused, my beautiful people. Ciao, bella.